Nightmarish shooting numbers

Normally, I don’t set too much stock in raw field goal percentages, not with advanced metrics like Effective Field Goal Percentage and True Shooting Percentage around. Still…Chicago’s FGP stats through the first four playoff games are bad. Really bad.

12 Responses to Nightmarish shooting numbers

It’s been terrible. What’s even more embarrassing is looking at hoopdata.com and the Bulls percentages “at the rim”. For the series, they’re well below 50% at the rim, while in Game 2 they shot 41.7% at the rim. They aren’t going to be able to get away with that percentage unless they somehow keep blowing teams away on the glass (which won’t happen). They HAVE to start converting the bunnies. It’s embarrassing. The league average at the rim was 64% this season!

“Why is this blog absolving Tom Thibodeau’s lack of adjustments and cluelessness on offense of any blame?”

It is, that is I am, not absolving Thibs at all. If you read through the game recaps from this series, you’ll see I have called his coaching into question several times.

Frankly, the spacing is out of whack and the Bulls aren’t generating the kind of open looks they need. That’s on the coach. And in Game 4, the fourth quarter offense became “try to get Kyle Korver open” for two or three full minutes.

Thibs began the season using the same mantra most coaches (and especially rookie coaches) use regarding offense: We need to run (and therefore create easy scoring opportunities) and play inside-out (ditto). However, as the season progressed and the team had to deal with injuries to Boozer and Noah, Thibs started “cheating”…depending too much on the team’s defense and on Rose’s ability to create offense at need. Thibs probably would have sacrificed five or six wins (or more?) to institute a more diverse offense (which is what coaches like Phil Jackson do), but it’s not in his nature to give up wins.

Now the basic offensive problems are more acute.

The best we can hope for at this point is for Thibs to get the spacing issue dealt with and coach the players to make better decisions with their passing (to avoid all the damn turnovers). Improved spacing should create more opportunities, especially for Boozer, who has been posting up in a mosh pit all series long.

Part of it is that there seems to be no real plan on offense. You touched on this in your comment and I think it’s right on. Far to often it seems to be just “give it to Rose and stand back.” That works to some degree because Rose is just that good, but it doesn’t allow anyone else to get into the flow of the game. Also, Rose needs to stop shooting so many 3’s. I understand, he loves that part of his game now. And I’m proud of him too for developing it, but 9 three balls in one game is about 6 too many. Especially when he only made 1 of them. Every time he runs down the floor and just pulls up from 3 I want to pull my hair out. It’s like he thinks he’s Ben Gordon all of a sudden. I hope it’s just a growing pain kinda thing and that he doesn’t continue with that, because it’s a really bad habit to have. It ruins offensive rhythm and when he misses it’s as good as a turnover.

Thibs has to find a way to get other people involved in the game. We’ve talked about the problems with Boozer, but Deng also has had his troubles. The problem is, Deng isn’t going to demand the ball. That’s not his nature. If you don’t make an effort to get him involved offensively, he disappears. I’d love to see him handle the ball a little, maybe drive it to the rack more often. Maybe get himself a layup and get his game going. Whatever happens, the Bulls need to get him going.

Also, what happened to the bench? This is the bench that hung like 50 on Orlando just a couple weeks ago? I understand that the playoffs mean you run a different set of rotations, but my goodness, Brewer only gets 8 minutes? Thomas only gets 5? Asik never gets off the bench? Watson gets 5 minutes? The strength of out team was the depth and now we’ve decided to limit our depth artificially by never playing any of the reserves.

Sure there is. Why would we want to start the game with a 3 point shooter who can’t play defense and tires easily, when we can use him to our advantage when he is most needed?
I would much rather have a defensive specialist at the 2 spot because most of our offensive weapons are starters anyway, and we should begin the game inside-out so Korver would get few options. Plus, it would be best to begin the game with a strong defense to try and build a lead early.
Would our defense be first in the league with Boozer and Korver starters? No.
Korver GETS MORE MINUTES than Bogans, and that is how it should be, but Korver should not be a starter.

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